Saying Goodbye

My husband and I started fostering Bela and Victor, now two 15-week old brothers, right around the time I gave notice. Normally we only foster cats on a weekly basis, picking them up from City Critters at theKips Bay Petco and returning them on Saturday morning. But because Victor developed urinary track infection during his first-week stay with us, we kept both of them for the following week. Then a spot opened on the vet’s waiting list for them to get neutered last Saturday, so we got to keep them for a third week.

Here are pictures of them when they first arrived at our apartment. Bela is the one on the window sill with the white paws.

Now that they have fully recovered, I must take them back to Petco today. Undoubtedly, I have grown attached to them.

I will miss their bird-chirping calls in the morning for food, their untiring fascinations with my necklace pendant, their soft warm bodies snuggled against my face unpromptedly, and their affectionate boxing matches with each other.

It is so easy to give into the momentary inertia to keep them. But having four cats in a Manhattan apartment is not tenable. Also, more importantly, I must return them in order to make room for other homeless cats as part of my overall mission as a foster volunteer.

In many ways, working as a BigLaw attorney is a relatively safe and secure default choice. There are many aspects of the practice I enjoyed, like the strategizing, the issue spotting and the advising. At the end of the day, it is too intense, like drinking water from the fire hose, and too consuming that I couldn’t explore my other interests.

Sometimes you have to let a good thing go in order to make room for things with a higher purpose.